The Returner
by Cryptographic DeLurk
Summary: Pegasus recreates the story of his love, once, twice, thrice. Ficlet collection. Cecelia/Pegasus. Isis/Pegasus.
1. Chapter 1

**The Returner**

by _Cryptographic DeLurk_

..

AN: This was written as a belated birthday gift for a friend.

In terms of fic content, Pegasus is a bit of a superior and xenophobic twit in the second chapter, so warnings for that. Third chapter has some talk about Islamic aniconism based on a seminar I went to in college given by an Egyptian artist that I only half remember. Please forgive me if I misrepresented anything.

Thanks for your attention, and on with the show~

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01

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She could be absolutely insufferable, he thought.

Cecelia was letting the servants take the fall for it, but Pegasus was increasingly sure that she was the reason his white dress shirts had been removed from the wash in a dusty pink hue, courtesy of the lone red holiday hand towel with the candy cane pattern trim.

She had hated them. Railed against their inclusion as part of the décor in their annual Christmas party.

"My dear, they are positively grotesque! Who does this?!" She had pointed to the sample. The embroidered gold letters – C & P, on a patch shaped like an angel's wing.

Pegasus replied he had no idea what she was talking about. The personalised monogram was adorable.

Cecelia called it kitsch. Pegasus called it adorably kitsch.

He ordered the towels behind her back. She had them removed and placed in storage behind his back. He ordered them brought back out. And so on.

The position of the Christmas tree shifted between two positions on the same ten foot tract. The issue being whether it should cover up the cubist piece that Pegasus had hung over the hearth. Pegasus said it looked like Old Saint Nicholas. Cecelia said it didn't look like anything at all, and that the collection of rectangles and half circles were lime green, not even a festive red. This started an argument about whether or not the Coca-Cola Company's Santa design deserved any reverence at all.

They yelled at the servants instead of one another, and anyone without thick skin to take it was summarily dismissed. Most of the dirty work was done through them. Until Pegasus of his own initiative took a pair of scissors to the floofy white synthetic atrocity Cecelia called a party dress. The next day Cecelia claimed (with her most insincere apologies) an accident that resulted in a frame of Funny Bunny animation cels taking a tumble off the balcony. It was from season two, episode fifteen: _Bunny in the Doghouse_, one of his favourites.

The message was made. There were some lines you didn't cross.

They exchanged Christmas presents early. Cecelia got him some original art by George Herriman and an "adorably kitsch" Funny Bunny mug. Pegasus got her a new dress in a rich, shiny emerald. But for all its svelte form, it hung loose on her. Even in the time since she'd last had her measurements taken, she'd grown significantly more emaciated.

They kissed. They made up. They doubled down on their conviction to take their frustrations about their quarrel out on the help.

The party came, with the monogramed hand towels tucked away from the guest bathrooms, Pegasus's artwork on full display above the hearth, and some kind of mess of hors d'oeuvres and drinks and entrée items arranged in a compromise that made neither of them happy. And Pegasus could tell Cecelia was tired and did not even want to be there. But when he tried to tell her she could go lie down, she declined.

"I would be driven crazy, lying in bed knowing I'd left you to make a mess of things hosting this party yourself," she tittered.

He smiled at this, and waved over one of the servers. But when he held a meatball covered in spicy mustard (her pick, her favourite) up to her mouth, she wrinkled her nose and turned away, looking faintly off colour.

"I don't think I can stomach anything that rich tonight."

The party ended a smashing success. And they had other silly disagreements in the New Year – the position of the bed in the sickroom, the tiles and towels in the adjacent bathroom, and how often the window might be left open – balancing the cold against the stagnating air inside.

But Pegasus found it harder and harder to argue with Cecelia. She became increasingly irate, increasingly controlling of even the smallest of details for every greater authority that slipped through her fingers. She became angry when he surprised her with Eggs Florentine instead the poached ones she asked for. She once said bitterly she'd asked for two slices of peach, not five – _Do pay attention, dear_. He had to retrieve her pillows from the main bedroom three different times before she was satisfied he'd brought the right ones – not too fluffy, not too firm.

And when he tried to banter with her about the curtains – These ones were such a drab colour. They should have bought the orange ones he picked out –

"For God's sake, Maxie! I'm dying! You can put in whatever curtains you like when I'm gone. Just- _Please!_" She had never been the type of delicate to mince words. But these ones made her voice crack and tears of frustration gather in the corners of her eyes. He wanted her to have shouted, but really she had only managed a quiet wail.

She reminded him again when he didn't like the hospice worker she had picked out. She continued to shush him, a damp towel thrown over every disagreement, up until the end. Even on that last day, before she fell comatose, she had touched his hand and willed him to stop speaking, stop crying, stop arguing with her that she might live.

_She really was such an insufferable person_, he thought. The terrible feeling of guilt hadn't been enough to stop him from thinking it:

_She always had to have the last word._

_._

_._


	2. Chapter 2

02

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The manager of the dig site called to tell Pegasus he really needed to make it out to the site (100km to the south and two hours away) as soon as possible. And he better come either with his permits and paperwork finally in order, or with enough money to bribe the military presence that had shown up and stopped the dig. Preferably both. Then something about how Pegasus was wasting time and money and the goodwill of everyone working on the project.

Pegasus said that was nice, but there was a new episode of _DuckTales_ out, and he could only watch it from his satellite setup at the hotel in Luxor, so no thank you.

He hung up the phone.

The manager called him back almost immediately.

Pegasus considered unplugging the phone line, but instead let it sit. When the phone stopped ringing, he called the concierge instead. He drew out the phone call as long as possible, imagining the manager of the dig site calling back and getting a busy line, but it was proving hard to do. He asked first if any mail had come for him (although he wasn't expecting any), then asked if the hotel was hosting any special events in the near future, and once he'd exhausted plausible business questions he moved onto personal ones.

He asked about the concierge's day, if he was working tomorrow, if he had anyone to go home to. Even as the other man dodged his questions, this provided a lot of opportunity to flirt easily and shamelessly. _It's lonely to not have anyone to go home to, isn't it? A handsome man like you deserves better. At the very least you're always welcome to visit me in my suite to shoot the breeze, as they say._

Pegasus was well aware that, in spite of his being a very exciting and romantic person with an excellent penchant for flirtation, that he was currently being very thoughtless and dull. He was not excited, so much as impressed by his ability to go through these motions by rote. And anyhow the concierge was keeping his responses perfectly polite and distant. Pegasus had the distinct impression that it didn't even occur to him he was being flirted with, and that either the man's English was rather imperfect, or that he might never have entertained something as scandalous as a tryst with another man. This suited Pegasus's impression of the population of this backwards locale he had found himself in, and felt magnanimous in letting the subject drop.

He placed an order for room service – a dish of ice cream – and then unplugged the phone line.

Pegasus had forced himself to shower and dress and brush his hair for the day, and he was once again impressed by his ability to do these things by rote but, having done so for days and days, that too had lost most of its charm. He was not quite sure what he was here for, and what he bothered to dress himself for.

He wondered again why his father had sent him here and arranged for him to help oversee an excavation by a friend of the family – to rub elbows with the bright college students and amateur archaeologists that might be considered Pegasus's peers, to get him out of the house and give him a different and more worldly perspective, to forget _her_. As if he could ever.

But Pegasus did not particularly want to _remember _her right now either. And, besides, his eye hurt. So, still dressed in his Sunday Finest (it was Tuesday) he sat in the hotel's king sized bed, wrapped the hotel sheets around him, and turned on the television.

He was thankful for American television, connected here to this setup in Egypt through some convoluted system of satellite and wire. _DuckTales _was not on yet, but the colourful iridescent buzz of toy commercials and shouting children felt soothing and familiar. Pegasus could watch them and be entranced by them entirely without thinking.

Room service arrived, thankfully before the show had begun, and Pegasus called for the waitress to enter. He planned on flirting with her as well, to round out the earlier conversation with the concierge. But as he attempted to discreetly touch her arm reaching up for the ice cream dish, he fumbled badly for his unsteady hand. The waitress looked at him rather callously and, feeling terribly embarrassed, Pegasus reached for his suitcase and fumbled inexpertly for a tip instead.

Once the waitress had left, he rationalised to himself that he might have fumbled due to his recent loss of proper depth perception. This was another grievance he would have to note for the lawsuit he'd bring down on that turbaned brute's head. But lawsuits were such a very American way of dealing with things, and it didn't seem to be in the spirit of a grand trip abroad to insist on it. And he hadn't contacted the police at the time of the incident. And he had the distinct impression no one would quite believe him if he relayed the story now, despite the chunk of gold now inhabiting his eye. And maybe beyond all that, he wasn't sure he disliked the thing. He felt a bizarre affinity for the item that he barely felt able to understand – an incomplete magic that hadn't quite yet taken ahold of him completely.

The ice cream, pistachio and chocolate, was rather good at least. Creamy, not too sweet, with whole pieces of the nuts mixed in.

_DuckTales _was also exceptionally good. Pegasus was impressed by the fluidness of the animation and the spirit in which it captured the comics it was based on. Scrooge McDuck's thriftiness and unabashed joy at swimming through piles of gold coins, all of which of course belied a soft gooey centre of fondness for his nephews, brought to Pegasus fond holiday memories of an uncle who also worked in the oil industry. And the comedic timing of the show was spot on, although it didn't quite make him laugh.

When the commercial break came, and with the ice cream spoon still dangling from his mouth, Pegasus hastened to close his suitcase back up from where he'd left it. He stuffed his backpack back inside the suitcase, along with a disturbed pile of clothes, and was about to argue with its very contrary zipper when he caught sight of a fluffy red edge of cloth.

He pulled it out before he'd quite recalled what it was. Packing for this trip had been such a hasty thing, and Pegasus was even in the best of times not very attentive to the three suitcases worth of luggage he'd brought with him. He remembered now that he had be overtaken by a fit of defiance, and stuck the red hand towel into his bag in an attempt to remind himself of his misery, even when the world might try to get the better of him and force him to move on. The monogrammed union of letters on the towel to remind him of the decay and death that plagued his own union.

It certainly would have accomplished its job one way or another, especially on a day that Pegasus could manage no more than to dress and sit in bed watching and mope over cartoons and ice cream. He might even have been brought to another one of his crying fits, as embarrassing as it was to consider. But he hadn't expected the euphoric and all consuming assault on his senses. It was almost hallucinogenic – the flashback appeared to have all the texture and sound and flavour of the real thing. As if Cecelia had spontaneously burst into the room, back from the dead to argue with him about how kitsch his taste in hand towels was. She flopped down onto the coverlet with a haughty harrumph that was so characteristic and normal he didn't quite know how to gauge it.

He wanted to cease this stupid argument and hold her, but he felt incapable of doing more than stumbling along with the conversation. He considered he must be talking to an empty room, and how strange it all was, but felt more and more as the conversation continued that he'd do anything to stop it – to bring her back so she might come up with a new insult for him, or show him some new affectionate gesture, or suggest he stop being a bore and take her out to explore this unknown city of Egypt. He'd give into whatever dark magic he had to return her from this afterlife where she taunted and playacted this unchanging stasis of memory.

In the end he woke up the next day. His good eye was wet with tears, and his other with blood. The bowl of ice cream was melted, and the spoon was on the floor.

He had missed the conclusion to the new episode of _DuckTales_, and the television was blaring unappealing – midnight shows at 9AM.

But maybe the worst part was, in spite of all this, Pegasus felt a renewed vigour and conviction. He couldn't say why, but he really needed to return to his business at that archaeological dig.

* * *

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AN: Is it the 1987 _DuckTales_ or the 2017 _DuckTales_? You decide, I guess.


	3. Chapter 3

03

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"May I be of any… assistance to you, Miss Ishtar?"

Isis shook her head from where she was upending the depths of the storage unit. A cloud of dust seemed to billow behind her as she worked her arms against the hoard.

"More help than you've already been?" she said neatly. "I appreciate the offer, but there's no need."

Pegasus considered how to combat this and came up short. How could Isis so primly and politely give herself permission to rifle through someone else's belongings? And to decline the owner's attempts at intervention at that, as if it was her right – how vexing.

She tossed aside boxes of unknown contents without a care. She blinked uncomprehendingly at a collection of typewriter ribbons. Grimaced at a plaque of elk antlers, before setting it gently out of her way.

Finally, she climbed over a collection of linens to find the swing panel display in the back of the room. The glass frames rotated side to side along a track, and she flung them all to one side and began flipping through them from the beginning. Each contained an Industrial Illusions original – the original card art for Duel Monsters.

Most of the more iconic paintings were on display on Industrial Illusions main premises, at event halls, or in similarly prominent locations. Most of the ones here were of the more mundane variety – Emergency Rations, Umi, M Warrior, Toll Hike. The exceptions being-

Isis paused in the middle of the display. Her eyes silently scanned over them with a reverence that she hadn't afforded the paintings up until then.

Her three gods, Pegasus thought. But that wasn't quite fair, was it – to disown them from himself like that? It wasn't as if he didn't believe in them, after everything. He believed in them far more than the existential heaven and hell that his grandfather had tried to drill into him in his youth.

Isis looked at them each in turn – Ra, Osiris, and then flipped the display to take in the blue of Obelisk, before continuing on her course through the rest of the paintings.

"You'll have to forgive me, Miss Ishtar. I've done a few full sized acrylics that were, for some reason or other, rejected rather late in the publication process. But I think a far greater number of the unpublished designs can be found in these portfolios."

He clasped a hand over a stack lying next to the glass display.

Isis was there before he could offer more, undoing the clasps, and digging through the paper, charcoal, canvas piece by piece with single-minded determination.

"If I may-?" Pegasus helped himself to another portfolio in the stack. "Do you mind describing what it was you were looking for again?"

Isis's hands did not pause leafing through the pictures, but Pegasus saw her forehead tense and her eyes flutter.

Isis told him again about the bird woman, like her namesake. Her colours and form.

"And did she have her own name?" Pegasus asked.

"I'm not sure," Isis said. And then, after a moment- "Maybe… Spiria?"

They dug a little further. But they were less than halfway through the pile, sorting through it on the warehouse floor, when Isis found her in the third portfolio. There were four pages of sketches, and a halfway aborted painting. Isis studied the bird woman's blue eyes and dark hair almost critically.

"I believe we decided to abort the concept for her similarities to the Harpie line," he explained apologetically. "Do you find yourself missing her?"

Isis hummed noncommittally. Her eyes stayed fixed on the images in front of her.

"Perhaps I should have seen it through," Pegasus allowed. "Insisted that this card be made for you."

"Oh?" Isis said. "And if you had, perhaps I would have won at Battle City. And then where would we all be?"

She made it sound simply like an observation, and Pegasus could not tell if she was feeling amused or curt.

Finally Isis sighed. Hunched over like a crone, she brushed her palm over the half-completed painting and sketches, warding away any dust or blemish.

Pegasus hurried up to find her something to wipe her hands on, before she could find the skirt of her dress. He identified a box, grabbed a red towel from between the cardboard flaps, and offered it to Isis before he identified it.

She wiped her hands absently over the monogram – C & P, and the candy cane striped trim. And he found it oddly easy to think about: How strange that these towels still be floating around. Of course they would be – he'd never ordered them gotten rid of. But Cecelia hated them. There were better reminders of her. Why had he once clung to this one so tightly?

Isis's words drew him back.

"I can't tell you how often I've heard the sentiment that the visual arts are a waste, back in Egypt," Isis said. "Certainly not something you'd want your children to busy themselves with. Artists can be quite unpopular."

"Oh?" Pegasus asked. To tell the truth he'd heard similar enough here in America.

"Yes," Isis affirmed. "If you look in people's houses, they won't have paintings up for decoration."

"None of those dreadful watercolour landscapes? Prints of flowers or vases?"

He meant it humorously, but Isis didn't appear to take it so.

"No," she said. "Egyptians prefer other types of imagery. Calligraphy is popular. They will often have verses from the Quran or Hadith written out in coloured ink over solid backgrounds, and have those hung from the walls."

Pegasus noted her speaking in the third person, as if she stood separate, and maybe belonged nowhere at all. He felt the need to tease her for it.

"And you?" he asked. "What do you prefer?"

Isis said nothing for a moment. She studied the grey wall of the warehouse, and then turned to her lap to study the drawings of her bird woman. Then she aborted this with a sigh. "The traditionalist and archivist in me would like to say I'm happier for having a visual record. That's what I'd like to say, but-"

Isis cut herself off with a wry smile. "I'm being terribly rude, aren't I?" she asked. "I apologise. I didn't intend to criticise your chosen profession or your artistic talent, or treat your work so carelessly. And after I was the one that asked to see it in the first place. I am- I'm not sure how to explain it. But I didn't mean to generalise when the sentiment I was aiming for was so…" She trailed off again.

"No need for apologies," Pegasus brushed away her concern. "Not that I'm not proud of my work, but I can't say I'm as fond of this series as I used to be." He'd churned out all these images of monsters and magic and wizards and gods in such a short time, like a man possessed. He saw now that it was more than just a figure of speech – a man possessed had been exactly what he was. "I may even go so far as to claim I understand where you're coming from." Not everything could be the type of magic that pulled you in so close it touched your soul. And thank god.

"To be honest," Isis lifted up a drawing of Spiria, "looking at this, I don't _feel _anything. Even Osiris, Ra, …Obelisk… I don't feel anything like I used to." Her eyes drifted to the swing panel display, then across the heaps of boxes and tarp and junk in the warehouse, and then they finally landed firmly on Pegasus. "Would you believe me, Mr Crawford, if I said that I found you the most interesting thing in this room?"

Pegasus felt himself colour. He caught himself before he could stammer. "You wound me, Ms Ishtar. I do believe there is a collection of Funny Bunny misprints stored in this very warehouse. I won't have you devaluing them like that." Smooth.

Isis laughed and didn't deign this with a response. She pressed herself up to crouch on the balls of her feet, replaced the drawings back inside the portfolio, and went to stack it back in its resting place. She still had the monogrammed towel, and she hung it over her sleeve after wiping her hands again. She stood up straight. "Well, I appreciate you taking the time to indulge me, Mr Crawford. I'll take my leave then."

He had probably missed his chance to ask her to accompany him to dinner, when he fumbled her compliment. It was probably too late but-

_Oh, why not?_

"Ms Ishtar, if you don't mind indulging me…" he began.

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_Fin._


End file.
